Maria's Girls (The Isaac Sidel Novels)

by Jerome Charyn

  His telephone console had been dialing Isaac’s number for hours. The big monkey wouldn’t answer the phone. And then a little after midnight the console lit up and Sal nearly jumped out of his skeleton. He heard Isaac’s voice coming through the speaker.

  “Sidel here.”

  His face was twitching.

  “Who is this?” Isaac asked.

  And Sal managed to mouth his own name.

  “Ah, my favorite corpse,” Isaac said.

  “I could shoot out your eyes any day of the week.”

  “That’s not like you, Sal, threatening me on the telephone.”

  “It’s not a threat … Nose is after you, Isaac. Watch your ass.”

  “He’s with your Family now.”

  “He’s a crazy cannon,” Sal said.

  “Like Captain White.”

  And Sal was twitching on both sides of his face. “Fabiano made the connection, not me. I met the man once. I knew he couldn’t kill you … Isaac, I had plenty of my own cannons.”

  “They wouldn’t have gotten near me. You had to use a cop.”

  “Yeah, a cop with a guilty conscience. He had a gun in his hand and holy beads in his pocket.”

  “How’s Margaret?”

  “Margaret? I haven’t been next to Margaret.”

  “That’s strange. You’ve been dancing with the FBI.”

  “Don’t insult me, Isaac.”

  “I wouldn’t insult LeComte’s prize rat.”

  “You broke me to pieces, Isaac. I’m on borrowed time … I’m only happy if I make you miserable. But Nose is too efficient. He wouldn’t run to a cardinal and cry. I know your business like my business. And I wouldn’t want to be alone in this world without you.”

  “Thanks for the proposal,” Isaac said. “But I’m too old to get married again.”

  And Isaac hung up the phone before Sal could say “Nose.”

  He dreamt of Margaret offering him such kisses that he was moaning in his sleep. He had to endure that pitiful fall into wakefulness. It was three in the morning and he woke the entire crew that attended to him. His soldiers dressed Sal and put on his shoes. Angelo looked at him out of his one good eye.

  “You oughta rest, Sal.”

  And Sal couldn’t even squeeze Angelo’s throat, because his girlish hands might split. And if he spat in Angelo’s eye the venom would be so terrific, Sal might blind his best man. He looked at himself in the mirror and got scared. One of his ears was like an insane flower that had curled back inside his head. His mouth moved in all directions. Most of his chin was gone. But his left eye had all the brilliance of a burning house.

  Angelo carried him to the wheelchair.

  His soldiers brought him down to the garage. He sat on the cushions in his white limousine, wearing his soft gloves. Sal’s fleet of four cars drove into the dark of Manhattan. There was constant traffic on the radios, which had all the police bands and could anticipate any attack. The windows were bulletproof and each limo had the horsepower and armored plates of a small tank.

  His fleet was indestructible. He rode uptown to a bottle club at the borders of Central Park where Delia loved to dance. He had no trouble finding her. She was with Caroll the cop. It was five in the morning, and Delia was dancing all by herself, half naked, her long legs hovering over the floorboards. It infuriated him to watch. He’d never dance with Delia, her energy would never be his. He threw everyone out of the club, except Delia and Caroll. He cut off the music, but Delia continued to dance.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, “I’m an old man. I could fall out of my wheelchair, watching you.”

  Delia stopped. “You killed Maria, Uncle Sal.”

  “Sweetie, it couldn’t be helped. He had a big mouth. He was telling everybody he was a G-man.”

  “Papa Cassidy was jealous. He paid you to kill Maria.”

  “Hold it,” Sal said. “Who reads all your contracts? Who bribes the City inspectors to keep this club open? … I want ya to marry Papa. Come on. It’ll get kinky. You’ll be Caroll’s mother-in-law … tell her, kid. Tell her to do it.”

  “Papa’s a prick,” Caroll said, wobbling from all the whiskey.

  Angelo nibbled on Sal’s ear. “We could teach the little cop some manners, boss.”

  “Don’t whisper,” Sal said. “It makes my ears ring. I have a lot of metal in my skull. It’s like a tuning fork … Delia, I could make you marry Papa. It’s called force majeure. I read that in a law book. It means the unexpected, the force outside the fuckin’ order of things. I’m that force. Me. Sal. Aint that right, kid?”

  “You’re Uncle Sal,” Caroll said.

  “And you’re the boy what had to guard pianos for Uncle Isaac.”

  “I am,” Caroll said. “And you’re the boy whose soldiers socked my wife.”

  “I’ll waste him,” Angelo said.

  “Shaddap … who’s a boy? I was baptized in hell by Uncle Isaac. I came back.”

  He wheeled himself next to Delia, his hand stinging from the effort. “You’ll marry Papa. That’s it. The case is closed.”

  He signaled to Angelo, who picked up Sal and carried him out of this bottle club, Chinaman’s Chance, his legs dangling like useless sticks. He was worse than a boy. He was a baby in Angelo’s arms. He’d had no appetite for Delia while she danced. He couldn’t stop thinking of Margaret. She was a grandma practically, with veins in her legs. She couldn’t even dance, as much as Sal remembered. She ruined Mafia men all over America. He’d tried to kill her in New Orleans. The woman had seduced his little cousins from Dauphine Street, Martin and Emile. The dopes wanted to marry her, even after Sal had warned them about her relationship with the FBI. And now Martin and Emile were dead. And Sal missed Margaret as much as he ever did. It was fuckin’ fate that brought him to a wheelchair.

  He traveled down from Harlem with his fleet of four cars. But he didn’t want to get back into bed. He’d only dream of Margaret, and he had to break that spell.

  “Where we goin’?” Angelo asked.

  “Cruise,” Sal said. “I’ll tell ya.”

  The sun came up around Sal, right through the filtered green glass of the windows, and blanched one of Sal’s knees. He started to shake, and Angelo put his arm around him.

  “Boss, do you want your blanket?”

  “Shaddap.”

  He found himself on Park Avenue. “We’ll stop,” he said.

  “Right here, boss?”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna visit the lady.”

  “Lady, boss, which lady?”

  “The millionairess what you slapped.”

  “I don’t remember slapping no millionairesses.”

  “Cassidy’s daughter, you dope.”

  “What’s her address?”

  “Park Avenue,” Sal said.

  “Boss, that’s not an address. I need the number.”

  “Take out my little book. Look under Caroll Brent. She’s Caroll’s bride.”

  Angelo removed a black address book from Sal’s pocket. He leafed through the book, his fingers trembling. “Boss, there’s nothin’ under B.”

  “Look under Caroll, you dope. I never put in last names. It might incriminate me.”

  Angelo found the address. He carried Sal out of the car. It was half past seven. Diana’s doorman looked suspicious. “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “Just say Sal Rubino … Angelo, have the boys bring up some flowers. The best. A big bouquet.”

  “But the shops aren’t open yet, Sal.”

  “Then find a fuckin’ shop that’s open.”

  Three of the soldiers rushed out.

  “Miss Cassidy will see you, sir,” the doorman said.

  “Of course she’ll see me … Angelo, put me in my chair.”

  And Sal rode upstairs with Angelo and another soldier. The elevator man had a blue birthmark on his cheek. Sal couldn’t take his eyes off that mark. He had the urge to tip this poor elevator man a hundred dollars, but he didn’t carry his own cash.
<
br />   Angelo rang the doorbell. A butler welcomed Sal’s people. Sal and Angelo went up a tiny elevator inside the apartment itself, while the other soldier climbed the stairs. This elevator had golden ribs and panels made of cherrywood. The car swayed slightly inside its shaft. Sal closed his eyes. He could have been on a rockingchair ride. And then he felt a rude shove. He opened his eyes and he was in Diana’s bedroom. Caroll’s bride was under the covers, wearing a dark blue gown. Her face was almost as pale as Sal’s. And when he saw the slight, slight bruises on her cheek, Sal started to sniffle. He couldn’t cry. He didn’t have the constitution for tears.

  “Apologize, you dope,” he said to Angelo.

  Angelo began to hide his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Sal bumped into the bed. “It was Isaac. He started the war. I …”

  Diana smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come …”

  “Mrs. Brent, I have no feelings in my legs. Isaac murdered me. I can’t cough. I can’t cry …”

  “Shhh,” she said, taking Sal’s gloved hand. And suddenly he started to bawl. His face was all wet. He could have killed Angelo for seeing him like that. Caroll’s bride fell asleep. He took back his hand.

  They returned to the hall. “Lend me a hundred dollars,” Sal said. Angelo and the other soldier reached into their pants. But this elevator man had no blue birthmark. And Sal was disappointed. “Save the hundred,” he said.

  They got into the elevator. The monkey was wearing gloves, like Sal. He heard two claps. He wasn’t stupid. He could recognize the little fuckin’ song of a silencer. The car descended into the basement. Angelo and the soldier were lying at Sal’s feet. The glass eye had fallen out of Angelo’s head. The door opened. The melamed was waiting outside the car, clutching a giant bouquet. The flowers were as blue as the midnight sun.

  “Hello, Sal,” the melamed said. “Glad you could make it.”

  26

  Rubino has no real chain of command. He’d been like a succubus around his Family, the man in the wheelchair who inspired dread, “the black Christ” who’d had his own Calvary out in the swamps somewhere. Fabiano Rice might have rallied Sal’s crews, at least for a little while, but Fabiano was found in his own toilet, with a plastic bag knotted over his head. Sal’s captains ran to Pennsylvania and the marshlands of New Jersey. The loansharks stopped collecting. Sal’s cement companies decided not to deliver cement. There were no reprisals. Jerry DiAngelis began walking the streets in his white coat, without a single bodyguard. Sal’s crews fell into line. The captains returned from the marshes and kissed Jerry’s hand. They couldn’t bear to live without the Family. And Jerry DiAngelis was the Family now. They might not have felt so humiliated if Sal had been killed. Then they would have grieved for him with the full respect of the Rubinos. But Don Salvatore was alive. The melamed had kidnapped him in his wheelchair.

  They weren’t fools. Don Isacco was back in business, not as the PC, but as Jerry DiAngelis’ war counselor. There were editorials about him. “None of us can be certain about Sidel. The Pink Commish was in a coma two months ago. He’s on sick leave from the NYPD. But no one at Police Plaza could put an end to the war inside the Rubino crime family. It took a wounded policeman away from his desk. And we have to ask: why hasn’t Her Honor welcomed the Commish?”

  Becky Karp summoned him to City Hall. “You’ve had your vacation, Isaac. It’s time to put on your badge.”

  “Your commissioners have been sending me little kites, saying how this old man ought to retire.”

  “You’re not an old man. And those were somebody else’s kites. Just put on the badge.”

  “I’ll make trouble,” Isaac said. “I always do.”

  Her Honor began to smile. She still had the muscular attraction of a former beauty queen. She clutched his hand. “Come on. A quickie. To seal our pact … or are you faithful to Margaret Tolstoy?”

  “I haven’t seen Margaret in months.”

  But he wouldn’t go down into the bunker under her office and reveal his wounds to Becky Karp.

  “I’ll wear the badge, Becky, but that’s it.”

  “You cocksucker,” she said. “You’re crazy about that slut. Get out of my office, Commissioner Sidel.”

  He got his badge from the property clerk, put on his fedora, and returned to One PP. No one dared look under his dirty old hat. His cadre of sergeants shivered in his presence. Sweets had returned to the First Deputy’s rooms. Isaac watered the plants, singing to the begonia that climbed his wall. He made no appointments. His own duty sergeant knocked on the door and handed Isaac a lunchbag filled with macaroons and mocha ice cream.

  “I don’t remember ordering any lunch.”

  “It arrived, Commissioner Sidel, sir.”

  “Call me Isaac.”

  There was a note inside the lunchbag. Congratulations. We have to talk. Frederic LeComte.

  Isaac threw the note into his wastebasket. He feasted on LeComte’s little lunch, licking the mocha off his fingers and devouring the macaroons. He was melancholy about his prodigious appetite. He couldn’t spend his life moving from meal to meal.

  His phone rang. He picked up the receiver and barked, “Thanks, Frederic. I enjoyed the lunchbag.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “I’ll put you in my book. How about next Christmas?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Well, I can give you a minute and a half.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Why? It’s your agency that’s bugging my lines. Your own eavesdroppers wouldn’t care.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Ah, don’t be so timid. Your client’s in Jerry’s hands. And you don’t like it.”

  “Isaac, I can close you down. Your badge doesn’t mean shit on the Hill.”

  “But I’m not on the Hill, LeComte. I’m at Police Plaza. And I can keep the federal government outside my walls.”

  “Don’t bet on it. I have some tough artillery. And you’re a lonely policeman in a dying town.”

  “Ah, faith,” Isaac said in that brogue he liked to adopt at Police Headquarters. “Manhattan’s been dying for three hundred years … all right, love, meet me at Sherwood Forest in an hour.”

  “I don’t want an entire precinct to know our business.”

  “LeComte, we have no business. I’m allowing you ten minutes of my time.”

  Isaac hung up on the cultural commissar and prince regent, who had his hands in a hundred different pies. Isaac had embarrassed the hell out of LeComte. LeComte’s star, Sal Rubino, wasn’t supposed to get kidnapped—not by Jerry DiAngelis, who’d survived four federal indictments, and Sidel, the first Hamilton Fellow.

  Isaac went downstairs to the fourth floor and pulled Martin Malik out of his little courtroom. Malik was wearing his judge’s robes, with a Glock peeking out of the black skirts.

  “I’m in the middle of a trial,” Malik said.

  “I know. You’re a hard worker. I’m reinstating Caroll Brent.”

  “That’s your privilege, Isaac. You’re the PC.”

  “I want the bloodhounds off his back.”

  “Talk to Internal Affairs.”

  “No,” Isaac said. “I’m talking to you, Malik. I’ll appear at Caroll’s trial. I’ll defend him at every fucking point. You’ll look like the silly prick you are.”

  “You can always fire me,” Malik said.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Isaac said. “But you’d better stop seeing Delia St. John, or I’ll arrest her for prostitution, for running illegal nightclubs, for selling contraband whiskey, for sodomizing old men, and I’ll pinch her while she’s in bed with you.”

  Malik blushed under his black robe. “You bastard.”

  “Better believe it,” Isaac said. “Now go on back to persecuting my policemen.”

  He walked out of One PP. His chauffeur, Sergeant Malone, was waiting for him. Malone could barely make out Isaac under the fedora. It was grand to have
Isaac on the fourteenth floor, but Malone wished he could see the lad’s eyes.

  “I’m going up to the Forest,” Isaac said.

  Malone put on the sirens and raced uptown in the PC’s black Dodge. He’d lit candles at St. Pat’s all through the dark nights of Isaac’s coma. But it wasn’t the same lad. Some of the juice had gone out of him.

  Isaac waltzed into Sherwood Forest without a word for Malone. Old man Weiss was behind the big desk. Isaac had put his Monday Morning Club back into place. He’d pulled Weiss out of retirement, rescued Barbarossa from a room of filing cabinets at the Police Academy, returned White from a phantom station in the Bronx. But White had gone on retreat with Cardinal Jim.

  He found Barbarossa upstairs in the weightlifting room. Vietnam Joe was doing bench presses. Isaac could have seized the barbell and forced it down on Barbarossa’s throat.

  “You Japped me, didn’t you, Joey?”

  Joe set the barbell down on its rack, sat up, and pulled on the fingers of his glove.

  “You’re LeComte’s little nephew, aren’t you, Joe?”

  “Did I have a choice? You were always under some bridge. LeComte had me by the balls. He caught me whacking out some dealer.”

  “But you’re indestructible, Joey. You’re not supposed to scare. That’s why I kept Malik away from you. I’d tell myself, ‘Let Joey steal. Let him kill a couple of bad guys. Joey’s my pathfinder in the woods. Joey will come through.’ But you’re a piece of shit.”

  “Then why didn’t you let me stay a clerk at the Academy?”

  “You’re my piece of shit. No one else can have you.”

  And Isaac walked out to the auxiliary shack and his two sweethearts, Wilson and McSwain. They were ferocious and beautiful, and they troubled his mind. He had to accept that they preferred to mate with women rather than any man. He was always shy around them, because he couldn’t understand their mystery. He wouldn’t flirt with one or the other. They loved Isaac as they would love some decrepit, cumbersome bear with brains.

  “Boss,” Wilson said, “what’s on the agenda? Are we ruining somebody today?”